Emergent gauge structure as a guide for engineering enhanced charge-transport characteristics: application to the tight-binding model 

Recent work has shown how to enhance the quality of an electrical insulator by making suitable adjustments to the Hamiltonian. This approach was rooted in the idea of transitionless quantum driving [2]. The adjustments, which come from a predetermined set, are optimized to inhibit transitions from the ground state when the insulator is subjected to an electric field. The present work harnesses information encoded in a certain diagnostic, or figure of merit, which is a generalized response function that depends on the set of adjustment operators. It possesses an informative gauge structure that can be harnessed to engineer improvements to insulation characteristics. These ideas are illustrated via their application to charge-transport in a tight-binding model.